


there's no place like home

by YourEverydayDemon



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Hurt/Comfort, Lack of Communication, M/M, i'm sorry iwa you know i love you right, mentions of the rest of seijoh, self deprication
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:08:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27652517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourEverydayDemon/pseuds/YourEverydayDemon
Summary: Iwaizumi isn't sure where they went wrong, only that he hates it.He hates mornings without Oikawa knocking on his door, afternoons filled with Oikawa's incessant "Iwa-chan!", walks home all by himself.More than anything, he hates himself, and he hates that he can't figure out how to fix it.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Kudos: 10





	there's no place like home

Hajime hates him. He hates his stupid face, his stupidly perfect hair, his stupid hands that have no right being that soft when he’s a setter. He hates the ever insistent “Iwa-chan~!” in that stupidly too happy and sing-songy voice, because who gave him the right to be happy when every day since it happened it feels like Hajime’s world is falling apart.

\---

And what hurts more is the way he pretends. He pretends as if nothing ever happened, that nothing they did _mattered_ , because in his world, full of fangirls and aliens and _volleyball_ , they were nothing but a small speck. A small brief moment, the light of a star long dead reaching the earth, bright for the slightest of moments, its brightness outliving itself.

\---

Volleyball is different. Its not the same anymore. Hajime doesn’t want to even play anymore, but he has too much riding on it to back out now, he tells himself. He refuses to entertain the nagging thought that maybe its just an excuse to see Oikawa everyday.

\---

He only slightly entertains the nagging thought that maybe he wants to hurt himself by seeing Oikawa everyday.

\---

He’s not the ace anymore. He doesn’t know why it matters, but it bugs him, because who gave Oikawa Tooru the right to ruin his life in more ways than one? Who fed his god complex and allowed him to decide to just - not set to Hajime anymore?

It hurts, seeing sets that aren’t meant for him. It hurts even more, seeing celebrations without him.

\---

He’s not sure when the rest of the team started taking sides. He probably wouldn’t have noticed either, if it wasn’t for the fact that they all seem to be against him. _Oikawa’s silver tongue won once again_ , was his only bitter thought when Hanamaki practically pushed him in the halls.

His second bitter thought, _he never even listened to my side._

\---

Its a weird feeling, watching the world continue without you, Hajime learns, every time he walks into a room and conversations cease. Every time he passes the team going to celebratory dinners after practice matches.

Every time he remembers Oikawa’s house is still next door to his.

\---

He doesn’t know how he forgot, not when the two of them spent too many hours screaming at each other from those windows.

He doesn’t know how he forgot, when the last words he said in that direction were “I hope you die, Shittykawa!” and the last thing he saw from that window was the broken face of his best friend, who knew that Hajime had meant it.

\---

He can’t call Oikawa his best friend. Not anymore, not after everything that happened. They were best friends - at one point - only to want to be more.

And to promptly realize that there was no way for them to be more.

So no, Oikawa isn’t his best friend anymore, nor is he his boyfriend anymore. He’s just… the boy that Hajime never wants to see again.

\---

That’s a lie, and Hajime knows it, but he’ll be damned if he ever admits it.

\---

If anything, Oikawa is the boy that Hajime wishes he would hate, but never could.

\---

“Iwaizumi!” Oikawa says as he sends Hajime a rare set.

He spends the whole day playing it over and over in his head. It sounds so wrong. He hates it.

He hates himself more for letting it happen.

\---

He wants to fix things, but he doesn’t know how. Because how could you fix things, when you get your heart broken and you break their heart back?

\---

Oikawa still gets fan letters everyday. They sit outside the locker room, in a small box with his name labeled on it in his infuriatingly neat script. Sometimes there’s other piles next to it too for all the other teammates, though Oikawa always laughs about how small it was compared to his.

Today, there’s a single envelope on the ground beside it. His name is written in a blocky script, a smiley face drawn beneath.

Hajime sighs and grabs it, slowly ripping the letter out of the envelope.

_He didn’t deserve you_ , it says.

_I know_ , he says back.

The letter sits on the bench next to his bag, its paragraphs left unread.

\---

They whisper about him in the halls, he’s sure of it.

_The volleyball team didn’t have anything good to say about him. He ruined Oikawa’s beautiful face. Poor Oikawa, it must be hard. He was always cruel. I hope he jumps off the roof._

They never said the last one, but Hajime wishes they did.

It’d hurt less.

\---

Without Oikawa Tooru, his world feels empty. Its a barren wasteland, a desert in which he wanders around aimlessly searching for meaning but never finding any, because he knows his life has no meaning without Oikawa Tooru.

\---

_This is how Dorothy must’ve felt_ , he thinks one day, watching Oikawa laugh at someone’s joke, _when she came back from Oz._

She went from color to black and white, magic to the dull of real life.

Hajime absently wonders if Dorothy ever wanted to go back.

He sure does.

\---

He wonders if he’ll ever see color again.

\---

He quits the volleyball team.

_There’s no point_ , he says, when Coach asks him why.

_There’s no volleyball without Oikawa Tooru_ , he almost says.

_The team doesn’t need me anyways_ , he replies.

_The team doesn’t like me anymore_ , he almost replies.

_I don’t deserve to be here anymore_ , is the only true thing he says.

He thinks Coach realizes it too, when Hajime leaves an unspoken _I miss them_ in the air.

\---

No one says anything as he gives his number four jersey away. No one says anything when he hits the last spike of his life. No one says anything when he leaves the locker room for the last time, fighting off tears that would have spilled if he looked back.

\---

It doesn’t feel real, leaving the volleyball team, and Hajime is still processing it as he watches dark spots appear on the cement by his feet.

“Wait!”

He turns around far too quickly, hoping, begging, praying for a reason to stay.

But no one’s there.

Hajime’s heart breaks again that day.

\---

  
Life goes on without him. And that's what hurts him the most.

He goes to class, eats his lunch in the shade of a tree in the courtyard, kept company only by the book in his hand ( _Looking for Alaska_ , Oikawa’s favorite). He walks home alone, pausing outside the gym - but never for more then five seconds, or else he’ll be crying on the way home. He greets his empty house with a _honey, I’m home!_ pausing at the doorway waiting for Oikawa’s _saying that to your cats is depressing, you know_ that never comes. He changes out of his uniform, turns on a barely relevant movie, and tries to concentrate on his homework until his parents come home.

The volleyball team has morning practices. They sit together at lunch, their laughs can be heard from Hajime’s spot. They have afternoon practices, sometimes eyeing Hajime if they see him standing outside. They go to the bakery after practice, always walking out with fresh baked milkbread. They go to tournaments, defeat Karasuno, go to nationals. All without him.

It makes him wonder if they ever needed him at all.

\---

His book was a gift from Oikawa a few years back, the year when Hajime admitted he’d never read _Looking for Alaska_ and Oikawa looked at him like he was insane.

There’s an inscription in the front cover, written in Oikawa’s far too neat script.

It used to say something else, but now all it says is _I hate you I hate you I hate you_.

_I hate me too_ , Hajime silently agrees.

\---

Tooru Oikawa always seemed so perfect.

So high and mighty,

A league of his own.

\---

Untouchable, that’s how Hajime always viewed him.

An unwavering pillar of strength and fortitude,

Always fighting to get better, to be better, even when he doesn’t need to.

\---

Compared to him, Hajime has always felt like a fool.

\---

Maybe that's why the fell apart.

\---

His best friend is one of the top setters in the country,

Someone who strikes fear in the eyes of their opponents on the court,

Someone who is somehow still incredibly lovable,

Someone who manages to be loved by almost everyone,

Someone who is smart, talented, kind.

Someone who is beautiful, inside and out.

\---

And, in the end, what is he?

A brute,

Unreliable,

Someone who hides his emotions behind nicknames, mockings, taunts,

Someone who could never compare.

\---

_Mean, cruel, violent,_ they called him.

In the end, they weren’t wrong.

\---

Hajime’s always been strong. He’s always been proud of it too, whenever someone on an opposing team says something like their ace has the strongest spikes or whenever he beat another one of his teammates in arm wrestling.

His pride has since faded.

He thinks he’d take his strength back if he could.

\---

It was the beginning of the end, when it happened. It shocked them both, Hajime believes, because he’d never seen Oikawa’s face look like that before. Hajime himself had looked at his hands, feeling the sting a little too sharply, seeing the red a little too brightly, his mind a symphony of thoughts and regrets and disbelief.

_I can’t believe I just did that_ , his first thought.

_Fuck, is Tooru okay_ , his second thought.

It came too late, because when Hajime looked up, Tooru was gone. 

Only the dark spots on the ground and the hurt in Hajime's heart proved he'd been there at all.

\---

And so Hajime stood alone, forced to somehow live with what he’d done.

\---

Spoiler alert,  
He still doesn’t know how to do that yet.

**Author's Note:**

> cry about iwaoi with me [here](https://twitter.com/chickfilgxy)


End file.
